Americans, Once Known For Their Optimism, Are Losing Hope

Americans, Once Known For Their Optimism, Are Losing Hope

Angst is “a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity.” Many of us feel it acutely right now—and that’s new. Angst isn’t a temporary, individual thing anymore. Now we all feel it together—or at least most of us do—and it’s not at all temporary.

If our nation’s work rate today were back up to its start-of-the-century high, well over 10 million more Americans would now have paying jobs. And that employment shortfall makes a real difference to the growth of the economy.

There Are Only Two Ways to Grow the Economy

You either have to grow the number of people working. Or you have to increase their productivity. If you remove 10 million American workers from the labor force, not only are they not producing anything, the vast majority of them are clearly consuming the fruits of the labor of those who are employed.

Couple that trend with reduced productivity, and we will be lucky to see even 2% growth for the rest of the decade. If we have a recession, we will end up with a lower GDP than we have today.

Think about that. And then plug it into federal budget projections.

Employers Lack Qualified Workforce

Meanwhile, employers feel a different kind of angst. Many either can’t find qualified workers or their workers require constant attention and extensive training to be productive. Neither side of the labor-management divide is happy with the arrangements.

Everybody is apprehensive about the future. The common complaint from businessmen is not that they need more capital and the ability to borrow money from banks. But that they need more good workers in order to attract more good customers.

The Result Is Trump

This widespread angst among employers, employees, and those who aren’t working is one big reason Donald Trump is now president.

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